Phantom avy info? 04/06/11

Thanks, Marcus, for sharing your experience with the TAY community.  Fortunately it was not more tragic.  I have found benefits for me from reading it.  It has initiated a behavior in me that Tremper describes in his book where my confidence for assessing hazard (including human factors) has been shaken, and I am taking actions (such as re-reading his book) to strengthen my confidence.

Thanks, Marcus!

There is plenty to learn from this incident.

Some may question the decisions that led up to it. I have survived being 18 and stupid over multiple decades, so even though I may learn from the sequence of events, I have no desire to judge.

It is obvious that everyone kept their wits in the aftermath. If you haven't been there, you can only wonder if you will be up to it.

What impresses me most, only became apparent after Marcus clarified the Imodium context. Keeping a sense of humor when there is still a lot of hard work and suffering between current reality and the certainty of survival is a triumph of spirit over adversity. To me, it illustrates the fierce determination to not just survive but to also remain whole. We are humbled by the power of nature, but even humble, we can remain mighty.

My first thought when this hit me was: "These are guys I'd like to ski with". Thanks for the reality check and for the inspiration.

Marcus - what struck me from your story is that you guys actually stocked, carried, and knew how to use the safety gear and first aid to treat an injury. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't -- especially when headed out on a "quick" dawn patrol on familiar ground. Thanks for the great reminder to restock my first aid and discuss first aid among the group I am with before heading out to ensure a decent supply. And given that a slide can steal some of your gear, redundant first aid isn't a bad thing either.

Here are a few of my pictures of the avy scene.


Hello everyone, I’m “Don” from Marcus’s post, with the broken femur.  My real name is Dan. Sorry to be party to the name confusion earlier…   I read the whole thread, and feel compelled to add my $.02, so I just now registered on TAY for the first time. I’ll try not to make this too verbose (though I’m sure I’ll fail at that) and I don’t want to repeat too much of what others have said.

My first goal is mostly to add to the usefulness of our experience in reducing the likelihood or severity of future avalanche incidents.  I acknowledge and appreciate those who have stated that they don’t “expect” a report from us, but at the same time I know how much I enjoy reading the AAC’s Accidents in N. American Mountaineering each year, hoping I can glean some tidbit from someone else’s experience that might save lives for me or my friends in the future.  My secondary goal is to get my own memories down before they fade from my head.

My point of view comes as someone who is probably less experienced with explicit backcountry skiing than any of the other members of the team, but nonetheless my experience is pretty deep.  I have lift-skied at Crystal all my life, and my experiences with avalanches began when I was 10 or so, being swept away in a slide in the Crystal slackcountry, saving myself from a likely very early grave by grabbing an opportune tree as I went by it and letting the snow slide under me.  I generally have gotten about 5 to 10 true backcountry days a season for the past 15 years or so.  In recent years, the Slot Couloir has been my most common objective, and I had done it most recently in late February, so I was quite familiar with the terrain.

Roger, on the other hand, a friend of mine for many years, has probably been up that side of Snoqualmie Mt. over 100 times – I’m guessing not many people know it better than he does. I didn’t know Marcus, Drew, or Doug well before our trip, but based on our conversations on the drive & approach it seems all of them make backcountry skiing their primary recreational activity in the winter.  I felt I had the least experience, and I had at least a slight feeling of deferring to my teammates’ expertise and judgment on this trip.

Although we didn’t discuss it much specifically, I’m sure we all knew the NWAC report for the day. We did discuss the obvious slow trailbreaking due to deep snow, and we swapped leads rather than letting Roger punch it the whole way like he usually does.  The increasing risk of avalanche danger was certainly on my mind, but in the trees lower down the layers did seem fairly well bonded in most places; even on the steep slopes around the cliff bands our switchbacks did not cause significant sluffs. As we got higher up into the sparser trees, we started spreading ourselves out and paying close attention to not skiing underneath each other.  There were signs that the snowpack was becoming more unstable up higher, but there were still no whumpfing or shooting cracks.  Our switchbacks did not slip out from under us.

We did not dig a pit.  We limited our assessment to examining layers exposed by steep switchbacking in a few spots and just the general feel of the snow & terrain. I’m not aware that this was a conscious decision to not do a more rigorous assessment.  Roger noted aloud at one point that our main concern would be the new snow that had fallen since the weekend. There was a slightly crusty layer about 12”-18” down representing the surface from the weekend.  I did notice (I think we all did) that the wind was blowing pretty hard up at the ridge as soon as it came into view, and certainly the possibility of wind loading there entered my mind a least for a moment. 

We converged at the entrance to the snot couloir to check it out. By this time I think we were all on the same page that skiing anything on the N side of the mountain would be a bad idea, from both a time and a danger perspective.  Nonetheless, we continued up to take a look at the slot in this order: Roger, Marcus, Dan, Drew, Doug.  We weren’t talking a lot at this point, but Roger pointed out areas to avoid on our descent because of their propensity to slide, as Marcus noted. Roger pushed a track up and climber’s right, around a convex minor ridge where there was a small group of trees. 

This is where we came upon the feature that eventually slid, a slightly horizontally concave and more open slope about 60 ft. wide. There is a minor rock buttress that comes down from the summit ridge on the far side of the open slope; all skin tracks up to the entrance of the slot must stay to climber’s left of this buttress.  There are a few trees around the base of the rock buttress, I believe that’s what Marcus referred to as the “few thick trees”.

He continued past the trees (Marcus’s “pocket of trees”) into the open slope. I watched Marcus wait at the small group of trees before the slope as I approached him.  When Roger reached the other side of the slope, near the base of the rock buttress, he made a switchback. Marcus took this opportunity to punch across the slope and joined Roger at the switchback as I took my turn waiting at the trees. I remember being aware that this was probably the most dangerous terrain we’d been on thus far, but I don’t remember being really worried.  When Marcus got to the switchback, Roger began pushing the next leg climber’s left, and I had a decision to make… wait for him to continue and eventually be breaking trail directly above me (above the trees), or punch it myself and get to the switchback before Roger got too far from it.  I deliberately chose the latter option, thinking that the switchback was close enough to the rock and trees to be safe.  And I made it.  The 3 of us were bunched up pretty close to the switchback, me on the downhill side, Marcus right above me on the uphill side, and Roger breaking trail about 20 feet up and left of us.  At that point, apparently Roger was on some wind-loaded snow that was much less stable, and it seems his weight caused a fracture about 5 -15 feet above him.  I did not see the fracture myself, just heard about it later from Marcus and Roger.  My first indication of a problem was the collapse of the upper part of the skin track at the switchback, that triangle wedge of snow that Marcus was on top of, onto the lower part, right where I was.  I dove up toward Marcus, toward what I thought was the top edge of the avalanche in hopes it would fall out below me (as I have successfully done on a couple other occasions), but the real fracture line was up a little higher, out of reach.

As this is the end of the portion of our day where we could have prevented being involved in an avalanche, I’ll pause here for a little reflection on our mistakes:

1. There will be some people who would say we had already made our worst decision by skinning up that side of Snoqualmie Mt. that morning at all.  Obviously if we’d bailed that early, it wouldn’t have happened.  I’m not in that camp though. I feel strongly that the avalanche conditions on most of that side of the mountain at that time were not severe enough for me to feel like I made the wrong decision to continue. Even after my experience, I would make that same choice again in identical conditions.
2. Once we made the decision that we weren’t going to ski the N side of the mountain, we should have focused only on the quality and safety of our run back down to the parking lot.  There was no real reason to continue up to the slot entrance, just our curiosity of how it was looking.
3. I think we were aware that the danger was increasing, but we didn’t alter our behavior significantly. We continued breaking trail along the normal path, relying mainly on our intentional spacing and the routefinding decisions of the leader.  That is not intended to put negative judgment on Roger for his routefinding decisions, but rather to claim responsibility for them myself because of my mental state. Speaking for myself, I was not opening my mind and being mentally proactive about assessing the whole situation. My self-image of being slightly less experienced than the others was a factor here.  If I had been leading others who were less experienced than me, I would have been thinking much more actively.
4. We should have been more rigorous about our snowpack assessment as it changed higher up.  Digging a pit would have alerted us more to the wind loading, and it also would have given us time to stop, think and discuss our decisions as a group.
5. Personally, I made an incorrect assumption that the far side of the slope by the trees & rock was safe from a fracture line from above.  I suspect Marcus made the same assumption.  If Marcus and I had not made this misinterpretation, we would have waited at the small group of trees until Roger was either completely back in safe territory, or, more likely, watched him succumb alone to the slide.  Still not great for Roger, but definitely a better outcome for the team as a whole.

Back to the story. It seemed I was separated from Marcus fairly quickly; I knew I was going for a ride, but wasn’t aware that Roger or Marcus had been caught yet.  I got my avalung in my mouth and stayed mostly near the surface for quite a while. Then it sped up and I got turned under, but felt I still had enough control to influence my position within the slide a little. I was actually thinking I was getting the hang of riding it out, just wondering how long I’d have to maintain, knowing the important thing would be my position when things came to a halt.  But then, with a surprisingly violent blow, I came to a halt even though the avalanche didn’t. I remember a quick chain of thoughts that crossed my mind in the next few seconds.  First, OW! Second, annoyance at the sudden disruption of my perceived avalanche flow management.  Third, profound relief that my ride in the avalanche was actually over and even though I knew I was at the very least badly bruised, everything would be fine for me.  I had hit the tree with my right quadricep only.  As I was soon to discover, I had instantly broken my femur, but then the continuing avalanche pinned my leg against the very large tree, which supported it and kept it from moving around more. My upper body was hanging around the left side of the tree, which created a large airhole in the lee of the tree.  All I had to do was hang out and wait for everything to stop.  When it did, I was mostly exposed. Drew came by first, with his beacon in search mode, and he was saying to turn off other beacons, and I assumed he meant me, so it wouldn’t interfere with his searching.  I said “I can do that…” and started struggling to get to my beacon, but it was buried under several layers of clothing and I gave up trying to do that pretty quickly.  I did yell that I very well could have broken my leg, but at that time I wasn’t sure; it was only based on how hard I had hit.  Drew kept going by to look for Marcus and Roger.

Soon, I got my left leg around underneath me to support my weight.  It was then that I realized my still-pinned right leg was not rotating the way it should when I twisted my hip around, and the muscles felt weird.  Not much pain, but then I knew for sure it was broken, and I better not move around much because there were probably sharp pieces of bone sticking around in there ready to tear things apart. Doug came by shortly thereafter, and I told him I needed my leg dug out and I asked if everyone was accounted for. Drew yelled up that he had seen that Roger and Marcus were on the surface.  Doug then proceeded to dig my leg out, and carefully set me down next to the tree.  I could go into more detail about the following events, but I think Marcus covered most of that well enough.

When I go into the mountains, I always go with the expectation that I and my team are completely responsible for ourselves.  Many places I have gone, that is totally true – if something had gone wrong, we never would have been rescued.  On that note, I’m truly grateful for the expertise of our own team.  Marcus in particular was invaluable, with his ability to set up my traction splint and many other things.  Drew and Doug used their experience to our advantage also – Doug hung out with me the longest, and his amazing attitude and quick thinking kept me going.  I can think of very little we could have done better as a team after the slide occurred.

Here is where I express my eternal gratitude to the parties involved in our rescue.  I am very aware that when we subjected ourselves to our avalanche, we were risking not only our lives, but the lives of our rescuers.  Nonetheless, the response was without hesitation and massive.  Seattle and Everett Mt. Rescue, King County, Bellevue Fire Dept., and others meshed their services seamlessly from my perspective.   It’s an incredible network we have here in the PNW.  Thanks guys so so very much!  I would love to name everyone I met by name, but there were so many and I’d be afraid of missing someone important I’m not great with names anyway!

However, when we can have an accident like this one and be rescued as quickly and professionally as we were, it makes it more difficult to maintain the correct attitude.  I would like to urge everyone to strive to keep it clear in your minds whenever you go out that you are on your own, it’s your responsibility to make smart decisions, and only when everything breaks down, you can hope (not expect) that you can be lucky enough to get a rescue like ours.

Things are going well for me; got my titanium rod installed, and now I’m home sitting on my couch – all indications are that I’ll have a speedy recovery, for which I’m very thankful.  Roger will have a rougher go at it, he’ll probably be in a wheelchair for a couple months at least.  We’re all here for you, Roger!  I’m sure next year you’ll be breaking trail for us up to the slot again!

I welcome any constructive comments.  Please avoid flames. They do no one any good.

Dan

Thanks for the pictures Dan, I'm sure that's what a lot of folk were looking for.

Very informative write up, vivid, honest and humble. Although admitting you were the least experienced in the group, I don't think your experience is beginner or novice by any means - maybe just not "current" to use a piloting term. In many other groups you could have been the one others were turning too, in this case you were with a group who just happened to have much more experience that average - a good thing!

I am also sure that your intent for posting this will be met - that those reading will take a step back and look at thier own groups in terms of communication, travel choices, first aid equipment/training etc. I've already received an email from one of my BC partners sent to our dawn patrol group as a direct result of this avalanche thread.

Heal up quickly and thanks for the posting.

Great write up Dan, thanks for adding it.

Thanks also for correcting my impressions re: that last skin track. You're 100% right that I felt that "island" was a safe spot and it makes sense now that you were trying to accomplish the same thing I was in getting across to it -- we both underestimated the capacity for propagation of the slab in that area, clearly.

So glad that you're doing well and that you weren't more seriously injured. I still can't believe you'd broken your femur, given how stoic you were with the pain.